Funny thing about that picture of Andromeda: it's pretty damn big. It probably covers a good portion of the sky. The only problem is, you can't see it because it's too dim. The only part you can see with the naked eye is the bright core in the center of that picture.

In fact, the logo of Subaru Motors is a rendering of the Pleiades star cluster.

/MIND. BLOWN.

The seven stars of the logo represent the seven companies that merged to form Fuji Heavy Industries, Subaru's parent company.

If only there were seven stars in the logo...

You can only see six of the seven Pleiades easily with the naked eye. The logo only has six stars.

IIRC, the Greek myth of the Pléiades was about seven goddess sisters, six of whom married goes and this shine proudly in the night sky, but the seventh fell in love with a mortel and vides here face in shame. Which is, the legend goes, why you can only see six stars without a télescope.

In fact, the logo of Subaru Motors is a rendering of the Pleiades star cluster.

/MIND. BLOWN.

The seven stars of the logo represent the seven companies that merged to form Fuji Heavy Industries, Subaru's parent company.

If only there were seven stars in the logo...

You can only see six of the seven Pleiades easily with the naked eye. The logo only has six stars.

IIRC, the Greek myth of the Pléiades was about seven goddess sisters, six of whom married goes and this shine proudly in the night sky, but the seventh fell in love with a mortel and vides here face in shame. Which is, the legend goes, why you can only see six stars without a télescope.

Robo Beat:IIRC, the Greek myth of the Pléiades was about seven goddess sisters, six of whom married goes and this shine proudly in the night sky, but the seventh fell in love with a mortel and vides here face in shame. Which is, the legend goes, why you can only see six stars without a télescope

phlegmmo:Robo Beat: IIRC, the Greek myth of the Pléiades was about seven goddess sisters, six of whom married goes and this shine proudly in the night sky, but the seventh fell in love with a mortel and vides here face in shame. Which is, the legend goes, why you can only see six stars without a télescope téléscöpé.

That's the 'Comet Empire' mothership, a/k/a 'The White Comet'. (It normally maintained a force field during flight that made it look like a comet.)

They were the main enemy in the second season of the 'Star Blazers' anime (a/k/a 'Space Battleship Yamato', one of the first anime series to make it big in the US). I first got turned on to it in the early '80s.

Ruled by Prince Zordar and his daughter, Princess Invidia, and assisted by Leader Desslok of the Gamilon Empire (the first season villain), Zordar took his empire travelling through the galaxy, conquering or crushing anyone in his way.

I'll always remember his statement, "People want things done *for* them, not *by* them." He saw, not necessarily incorrectly, that the masses were usually easily-led sheep.

Star Blazers impressed me greatly for the time, in that it was ostensibly a kid's cartoon (I was in my mid-twenties then) that provided a continuing story arc with continuity between episodes, actual character development and growth, and enemies who were sometimes scarily intelligent and competent (at least, at the top levels, Desslok and Zordar. Both of them had their share of stupid underlings).

If you think the Comet is unlikely, the Star Force's ship, the Argo / Yamato was patterned directly on the Japanese WWII battleship 'Yamato', made spaceworthy and outfitted with energy cannons and an FTL drive. I prefer to believe they built a new hull based on the biggest design they had access to (they were in a hurry), rather than that they refitted the original Yamato.

A few years ago, a live action feature film of the first season came out. It's available on DVD, and is a pretty good retelling of first season.

see what Nicholas D. Wolfwood said, above -- plus which, the Comet Empire were conquerors who originally came from the Andromeda Galaxy.

While I did enjoy the live-action Space Battleship Yamato movie re-make from 2010, I felt the overall story was overly-compressed, and that one of my favorite characters -- the robot Analyzer (aka "IQ-9") was given short-shrift, due to the cost of VFX in Japan.

The first Yamato TV series is currently being remade again, as a 26-episode anime series titled Space Battleship Yamato 2199, which began in summer of last year, and wraps-up this fall. Approximately every two months, a batch of four episodes enjoys a limited theatrical run, before being released on Blu-ray and DVD.

Yamato 2199 tells essentially the same story of the "Quest for Iscandar" -- but with the added depth of new crewmates and subplots (some of which elaborate on the story from the enemy perspective), and with a well-blended mix of CGI and hand-crafted animation. Incredibly, the Blu-ray discs of the series released in Japan contain optional English-language subtitles! (however, those BDs are priced at ~US$80 per volume, for a 7-volume series)

Here's hoping that the second TV series (which features the Comet Empire) may also be re-made as a follow-up to 2199 (as Yamato 2200..?)

noazark - Thanks for the tip; I didn't know the anime reboot was as far along as it was.

Back in the '80s, I started recording (VHS) all the Star Blazers I could get hold of (no/few video stores in those days). Eventually, I had full copies of 1st and 2nd seasons. One weekend, a friend of mine and I got a couple of VCRs together, and edited the whole pile down.

We took out all the commercials ('Hungry Hungry Hippos' and 'Sam Eliot as Hugh Cardiff, in Wild Times!' still provoke violent flashbacks), took out the episode openings and closings, and left one set of opening credits and one set of closing credits at the end of each season.

Each season of 26 half hour episodes boiled down to about 8-1/2 hours of tape. As a result, the original series is sorta burned into me, even now.

Back then, I was helping run a small Science Fiction convention, and did the video room. We had two rooms - first room ran all seventeen hours of Star Blazers, straight, followed by all seventeen hours of 'The Prisoner'. The other room ran a more assorted mix. Remember, this was back when this stuff was hard to come by. We kept the rooms packed, and I like to think we did our part to nurture the flames of fandom.